


leave this star-crossed world behind

by harpers_mirror (SapphireBryony)



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, mentions of bullying and parental abandonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 08:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10612758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBryony/pseuds/harpers_mirror
Summary: All his life, Sam Lambert loved three things: words, outer space, and rules. None of them ever served him particularly well, and none of them saved him in the end. A character study in five parts.





	

**I.**

Sammy Lambert is six years old and loves words.

He has loved words for as long as he can remember. 

He has loved them since he was three and learned to make sense of the words in his books all by himself. 

He has loved them since before that, when Ma pulled him into her lap and read him stories about little boys who solved mysteries with their dogs and little girls who went on fantastic adventures and learned magic and little engines that thought they could, and did.

He has loved words since he discovered that, if he could use them in  _ just _ the right combinations and orders, they could let out some of the thoughts and ideas and plans and fears rushing rushing rushing around the inside of his overcrowded head. That they could siphon off some of the noise and maybe, if he was very very lucky, someone else would hear the words he said and listen to them and  _ understand. _

He has loved words since the day he realized that, with the right words, a person could make other people do things, feel things,  _ believe _ things. That words were powerful and he could only dream that one day, some of that power might be his.

He knows that, just like anything else that carries power - weapons, money, Indiana Jones trading cards - a person has to have a  _ lot _ of them to use that power. 

And so, Sammy Lambert sets about learning every word he can. Eventually, he thinks, he’ll learn every word there is - the concept of “other languages” was as yet kind of abstract - and then people will have to listen and he would be happy.

It doesn’t work. It doesn’t make him happy. The other kids - having already decided he was weird because his glasses were too big, because his pants were too short, because his mom had left the year before and what kind of  _ normal _ kid didn’t have a mom? - can’t understand him. His teacher Mrs. Rebstock doesn’t like him after he corrects her spelling for the half-dozenth time. Some of his more belligerently ignorant classmate decide that any word he uses that they don’t understand is a vicious insult, and respond accordingly.

Nerd.

_ “But I just want -” _

Egghead.

_ “I just want to make -” _

Dweeb.

_ “I just want to make people understand what I think! And I want to know what they think! I want to understand!” _

Stuck up, think you’re better than us just because your nose is always in a book, doncha four-eyes? No wonder your mom didn’t want to be around you. Who would? Ya understand  _ that? _

These words, and the beatings that were often served up alongside them, push the words back into his mouth, drive them down deep inside until Sammy is silent and the inside of Sammy’s head is loud again.

* * *

 

**II.**

Sam Lambert is fourteen years old and dreams of outer space.

He has dreamed of outer space since science class in sixth grade when the teacher, Mr. Morton, had gone beyond a dry recitation of the nine planets and their basic facts and delved deep into a whole study of the limitless potential in the dark recesses outside the world. His words - passionate talk about the practicalities of colonizing other planets, the realities of space travel, vessels that could travel faster than light - pulled at Sam in a way nothing had since those early days of reading when every idea was fresh and new.

It was Mr. Morton’s casual aside about the chance of discovering life on other planets though that really grabbed his imagination and set it running. A line from a book he had read the year before drifted through his mind.

_ “Go then,” _ the character, Jake, had said.  _ “There are other worlds than these.” _ And Jake had been a boy just like Sam, an ordinary kid who found himself thrown into another world, an alien place. For the first time, Sam considered the fact that just maybe, this small, limited world wasn’t the only place for him. 

There _were_ other worlds than these. Mr. Morton had said so, had shown them grainy pictures of those worlds, banded and ringed and hanging suspended in starry darkness a million miles from anything. 

And where there were other  _ worlds, _ Sam reasoned... why shouldn’t there be other  _ people? _ New, different,  _ alien _ kinds of people. Ones who might think different thoughts than the people here thought. Who might believe or value or fear different things. Who might, maybe, see the value in a boy who knew all the words but not what to say. 

Perhaps they’d be different. Perhaps he could use his words to try and make  _ them _ understand him, and they would, and he would understand them and be accepted and belong.

It took less than a week for his interest to become obvious and for his classmates to start calling him “alien boy,” “spaceman,” and “Mr. Spock.” 

Sam thinks privately that his classmates really could do better in terms of insults, but nevertheless retreats back into himself. The dreams of space, like the love of words, are maintained and nurtured in secret.

He stops raising his hand quite so fast and so often. Sam tells himself it’s not that he cares what anyone else thinks, he just wishes they’d stop expressing their opinions with quite so much physical force.

* * *

 

**III.**

Samuel Lambert is twenty years old and lives to follow rules.

He was never one to break them even as a child but as a man, he recognizes the importance and the simple brilliance of rules: if you follow them, to the letter and without deviation or reinterpretation, you can do exactly what other people expect of you, no more, no less. And when you do exactly what people expect of you, they should have no reason to insult you or hit you or think you’re weird or crazy or annoying.

Following the rules should make you just like everyone else. The moment when this simple yet powerful revelation clicks into place for Samuel is a glorious moment indeed.

Except... 

Except he discovers in time that he is once again the butt of the universe’s great cosmic joke. That the rules are arbitrary, inconsistent, changeable from place to place and group to group, and above all, not uniformly followed. Deciding which of society’s rules to follow and which to break and when and why and how - the new flood of questions pile in and bury him once again in an avalanche of uncertainty.

He tries for a time to mold himself to the expectations of various groups, tries on mask after mask, hiding behind a variety of facades until, one day, he stops. Gives up, throws his hands in the air, shouts at the world.

_ “Fine!” _ he shouts, voice shrill and cracking. (Puberty never really seemed to end for Samuel Lambert after all, at least not where his voice was concerned.) And again,  _ “Fine!” _ He slumps to the ground, hands raking his hair to strange peaks and valleys.  _ “You win,”   _ he mutters to the universe.  _ “I don’t belong here and I give up.” _

When the third part of this triptych of revelations hits him later - that if rules are indeed so arbitrary and mutable that basically anyone can set them - he sets into place the most rigid structure he can design, rules to govern all his interactions.

If no one will hand Samuel Lambert a rule book for his life, he’ll write one himself.

* * *

 

**IV.**

Lieutenant Samuel Lambert is thirty three and has been handed everything he’s ever wanted or hoped for in life:

A chance to communicate.

A journey away from the confines of Earth toward those long-awaited other worlds.

And a point-by-point rule book for every possible situation he might encounter.

It seems almost too good to be true but he doesn’t question it and maybe he should have.

When the end comes for him, words make no difference. They hold no power. Those other worlds are still cold and distant and silent, their inhabitants having no more interest in weird little Sammy Lambert than the people back on Earth ever had. And the rules never mattered to anyone but him, Pryce & Carter proving as arbitrary and useless as any other human code.

* * *

 

**V.**

Lambert is thirty five and he dies as he lived: words silenced, dreams unfulfilled, and with no rules to guide him.

**Author's Note:**

> I... have a lot of feelings about Sam Lambert. If you're so inclined, leave me a comment and tell me what you thought and/or shriek your own surplus of Lambert feels at me.


End file.
